Speed Writer Believes Keanu Reeves Saved His Career by Avoiding Sequel

Graham Yost, the writer of action extravaganza Speed, claims that he and Keanu Reeves were lucky to avoid the sequel that could have sent their careers downhill. Speed 2: Cruise Control is a famously bad sequel and only a few came back for it, Sandra Bullock and director Jan de Bont, among those. Bullock managed to continue her career, but de Bont failed to recover.

Speaking to Comic Book about Silo Season 2, Yost remembers “dodging a bullet” with the catastrophically bad result of the Speed sequel. The question about a new sequel always arises, and the writer addresses the difficulty of bringing Bullock and Reeves together one more time. The problem is that Speed 2: Cruise Control seems to linger in the air as the nail in the coffin for the franchise. Per Yost’s answer about a new Speed:

“There is also just the echo of
Speed 2
, and that’s hard to shake off for Sandra Bullock. Keanu and I both feel, ‘Man, we really dodged a bullet on that one.’ I used to say that I was not invited to a party I didn’t want to go to.”

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Speed 2 just didn’t work like the first movie about the public bus that couldn’t lower its speed or else a bomb would go off. It also didn’t have the best box office performance, and it represented an embarrassing follow-up to one of the highest-grossing films of 1994 (and also an Academy Award winner in the Sound categories). People missed Keanu Reeves, but they were also pretty angry about the new villain and the setting of a slow cruise ship heading for disaster.

Yost is not exactly wrong with his remarks. Speed 2: Cruise Control was a disastrous movie for 20th Century Fox executives who were quick to try to hide it. Reeves made his most important movie two years later, and Bullock was slower in recuperating, but she ultimately did. De Bont was the most affected player, whose next opportunity at redemption, The Haunting, was met with even worse reactions. He was ultimately convinced to take a break from the Hollywood spotlight.

What Went Wrong With Speed 2: Cruise Control?

Released three years after the original film, Speed 2: Cruise Control was a very divisive sequel that unsuccessfully tried to emulate the effect of Jan de Bont’s action gem from 1994. The project was discussed before the release of Speed because rumors confirmed the Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock action vehicle was going to smash the box office. Without a story, or a way to follow the original one, negotiations began and they included the participation of both stars.

However, Reeves didn’t accept the role because he simply didn’t like the direction of the story. Bullock agreed to star and Jan de Bont only had half the resources that made the original a great action movie. Rejecting hundreds of ideas and scripts, the director decided that his original approach was the best: crashing a cruise into an island, an idea he got from a nightmare.

And what a nightmare everything was. The film opened to terrible reviews, with many critics saying the story wasn’t exciting. A cruise ship is too slow, and de Bont couldn’t produce the same thrills he had achieved the first time. The box office performance was good enough, but it still fell short of reaching a profit for the studio; back then the production budget for Speed 2: Cruise Control was a mindblowing $160 million (only the cruise crash scene cost a huge chunk of that budget). The movie only made $164.5 million upon release, and sent all ideas for a third movie to the trash bin. But hey, it could happen.

Release Date June 13, 1997

Cast Sandra Bullock , Jason Patric , Willem Dafoe , Temuera Morrison , Brian McCardie , Glenn Plummer , Colleen Camp , Lois Chiles , Mike Hagerty , Bo Svenson , Francis Guinan , Jeremy Hotz , Royale Watkins , Christine Firkins , Tamia , Kimmy Robertson , Patrika Darbo , Connie Ray , Susan Barnes , Charles Parks , Enrique Murciano , Jessica Diz , Alex Montesino , Mark Adair-Rios , Xavier Coronel , Tyler Patton , Craig A. Pinckes

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